S02 EP09: How to Write A Great Common App Essay: What's your hook?
In this episode, we'll explore key insights and strategies to help you make the most of this crucial process of navigating the 2023 Common App, with a focus on crafting your unique common app essay.
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In this episode, we'll explore key insights and strategies to help you make the most of this crucial process, with a focus on crafting your unique Common App essay.
Navigating the 2023 Common App and Examples of Unique Common App Essays Just five days ago, the new Common App dropped for eager applicants. So, if you're a high school senior or a parent looking to support your child, buckle up for an enlightening discussion.
Key Highlights
Getting Started with the New Common App: The August 1 opening of the new Common App marks the beginning of the college application season. Immediate action is advised to set up your Common App account and initiate the process. For parents, this is an opportunity to engage if your child desires your involvement.
The Importance of Sections: The Common App is multifaceted; each section plays a unique role in your application. Thomas emphasizes exploring each section individually and understanding its contribution.
The Main Common App Essay: A Deeper Dive Addressing the much-anticipated Common App essay, a central element of the application. Students often feel challenged by crafting a compelling essay that truly reflects their essence. A reminder that an essay without struggle might lack depth and authenticity.
Finding Unique Essay Topics: The misconception that essays must revolve around immense tragedy or dramatic events. Encouragement to explore personal interests, hobbies, and experiences that define you. Examples of students who turned unconventional topics into compelling narratives.
Affirmative Action - Race and Identity in Essays: Addressing recent developments, including the Supreme Court affirmative action decision on race in admissions. The importance of incorporating personal identity and background into your narrative. Emphasizing the need to integrate identity seamlessly into the broader context of your story.
COVID-19 and Additional Information Essays: Assessing the relevance of including COVID-19 experiences in the Common App. The significance of conveying how challenges or changes have shaped your journey. Strategically using the "Additional Information" section to provide context where necessary.
As the Common App season kicks off, remember that your application is your canvas, and your essay is your masterpiece.
Reflect on your passions, experiences, and identity, and weave them into a compelling narrative that speaks to who you are.
In the upcoming episodes of our series, we'll continue to unravel the mysteries of the college application process, offering insights and advice to help you succeed in crafting your unique Common App essay.
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
Related Links
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Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel. I'm the former director of MBA admissions and financial aid for my alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this podcast, I don't promise easy answers or quick fixes. But I will use my decades of experience to help you achieve your education goals. Now, let's get started.
And today, we're going to start talking in depth about the new Common App just opened about five days ago, August 1. And if you haven't set up your common app account, I encourage you to do that as soon as possible. For parents, this is a great opportunity for you to get involved in the process, if your child wants you to be involved. One of the first and most important things to do is data entry. And what I've found is that high school seniors can get very overwhelmed very quickly with all the things that they have to do. And attention to detail is critical here.
So having a second pair of eyes for them to look through and make sure that capitalization punctuation information is correct. That's a great way for you to help. And it does give them some feeling of confidence that somebody is reading behind them, and able to go in and adjust things and make sure that addresses are correct, make sure that under parent information, your information is correct. All of those fun things.
But what we're going to do is start working through different sections of the Common Application, because it's important to look at each section, look at each piece and understand how they function on their own. As well as in the broader kind of macro strategy of the application we're trying to create. However, the first thing everybody wants to jump right into is the common app essay.
And I understand that it's that big, white whale out there cruising through the seas. It's something that you think about, it's something everybody's talking about online. And so I wanted to give you some thoughts because my own students now are really kind of struggling with this. And keep in mind, everybody struggles with the Common Application Essay if you're able to write a common application essay, without struggle, without sweat, and without some blood and tears. Maybe you're an immensely gifted writer, but more than likely, you're not digging deeply enough. And I want to talk about that. Today, this really should be a deeply personal process, right?
So something surface-level is really not going to cut it. You know, when you're writing. Remember that topics that seem compelling to you topics that your parents like, topics that your English teacher might give you a gold star on, are not necessarily effective essay topics. I've talked about this before.
But I want to give you some examples today. And I want to dig a little bit more deeply because now is the time right? People are writing people are trying to develop their themes. What we want to do is beware of cliches, right? I overcame this, I was challenged by this, and I was victorious in this. A lot of times those things can be immensely personal to you. Yes. But it's mostly in the way that you frame them.
So the important thing with these essays is and you've heard this before we show we don't tell, right? It's like with children with your children you can tell them, but until you show them and walk them through examples. The lessons don't always necessarily stick.
So the first thing people always say is okay, but what's my hook? What's my hook, I need something dramatic, or I haven't had this massive life crisis or trauma that's happened in my life, you know, how am I supposed to make anything happen? And I think that I really want to get away from this misperception that the only effective essays are essays that deal with immense tragedy, or something that is, you know, earth-shaking. Most of us don't have that experience in our life, and thank goodness, right? Or even if we've had an unfortunate accident or occurrence or something that has come up in our life, that may not be and I know how this sounds, but that may not be the most compelling essay topic, right? So always ask yourself when the reader is reading this, they're going to ask one important question and that is so what? Okay, this happened. I see that.
So we want to avoid the trap of just talking about something that happened in the past, right? We definitely don't want to talk about anything that's happened to us, I would say prior to sophomore year of high school.
Now, if it is a defining life event or defining life trauma or accomplishment, then okay, let's say that you discovered your love of the violin. And in seventh grade, you were pulled out of regular school to study with the New York Philharmonic and you are on track to be the youngest soloist ever. Okay, that's very different. But for most of us, we really don't want to talk about something that happened in grade school in kindergarten, let's stay away from that.
Similarly, family, we want to stay away from family. And look, I love and respect my own parents, I love my children. But those are not compelling stories, right? And many times, as a question might ask, who's a hero, we really want to avoid family members. In most situations, there are cases certainly where if you've grown up in hardship, or in you've really watched a parent of yours struggle, and you've kind of worked with them, and help them and help support the family, for example, then that may be an impactful essay.
But in general, we really want to know as a reader, about you about the person writing the essay, not just what happened, what happened really should be one or two sentences, right? But how that's affected, how you live your life, what you do, and then how that will continue going forward.
So I want to give you some examples of things that have happened, students that I've had that have talked about experiences in their life, you know, that don't necessarily involve massive tragedy, or if there is a personal element of personal tragedy, it's touched on very lightly, to simply set the stage for a talk about them and what they are trying to accomplish.
So the first one was a student who was admitted to a top Ivy League school. And she talked about the fact that she was just an incurable, practical jokester, she loved playing practical jokes, funny, loving practical jokes on her family and on her friends, and she would set these up, she would, sometimes it would just be her sometimes it would be dozens of people involved. They were complex, but they were lovingly done, never negative.
And it showed creativity and it allowed her to talk about her family, her friends at school, and her academics, and she was able to create this personality, where she was relentlessly curious and fun, and adventurous. And use these practical jokes to boost friends of hers who are having a tough time at school, or play a prank on a beloved teacher who was retiring. And so it really gave a unique perspective on her. And then, you know, she used the other essays in the supplements in the Common Application to talk about academic goals and more serious sides of her, but that really was able to give us a nice complete picture of her personality.
The next example of one of my students was a young man, a very kind of stereotypical stem, who worked very hard in physics and wanted to study astrophysics. And he kept just cranking out these really dry, boring essays about how he started the science club. And he started the astrophysics club, and he's president of the physics club. And you reading these essays, and it's just, you know, he was not showing he was just telling us I did this, I did this, I did this. And we were talking just kind of off the cuff one day, and he made a quip about extraterrestrials ETS UFOs. And I kind of laughed, so it's kind of funny.
And he kind of unprompted, went into this whole discussion about extraterrestrial life and UFOs. And I said to him, I said, Well, wait, hold on, where is this coming from? What is this and he's like, Oh, it's just like my personal interest. You know, I really want to be the first person to discover to prove there is extraterrestrial life.
And I said, Okay, that's really interesting because it drives everything you've done now make sense? And that passion drives that and we talked about how he was driving in the car with his parents through New Mexico when he was young.
He saw this bright flash of light he wasn't sure if he was asleep or we were awake. And it sparked his interest in UFOs. And he was able to tie that very clearly. Right? So we opened the essay with a line about how you know, I believe in extraterrestrial life, you know, not little green man, but I'm going to be the first person to prove their existence. And so this love of science, this love of math and astrophysics, really came to life in this context. And yes, the ET part was done a little bit tongue in cheek, but when you're reading that, as a reader, you kind of appreciate his sense of humor, as well as the way he took a really rational approach to this.
And then he's bringing in, in the way this school and he ended up attending another top IV. He's pulling in examples of professors who are doing really unique work that sometimes was directly related to astrophysics, other times tangential to that, and, thinking about anthropology and thinking about cultural like, what happens when we discover like, what is what are the implications of that on a cultural basis for the, the earth and for this other civilization.
And so, it was a very, very interesting dissection of something he was very passionate about. And so I urge you to think, you know, we want to kind of regress, we want to go back to that common denominator and think about, what is it that inspires you? What is it that makes you uniquely you? Is it baking? Is it graphic novels? Is it music? Is it Sports? Is it botany? And then distill that down to, you know, what is it when you meet new people? What is it that they really want to talk about, as they get to know you? Right, and, and that is a good I think, Guide to start thinking about it.
Because I've all these students right now struggling, one student says, I really love building businesses, but I'm not really sure how to specify that, for example, somebody else another student, is trying to figure out how to relate a surfing accident where they almost drowned. And they're, you know, relentless fear of failure and really struggling with that. Because we see a lot of times, for example, in the business example, this student is just cranking out these really dry formulaic I did this and then I did this because I want to do this. And I like this.
On the other hand, we have the surfing accident, which is so high-level and so metaphorical, that it lacks any tie to the student and is just very up in the atmosphere. And there's nothing to really pull us back to Earth and say, okay, understandably, you know, traumatic incident.
But what does that mean? I don't get a sense of you and how it informs your decisions and actions, right? To more specific examples for you, because I know that right now, a lot of you are struggling and examples can help. I had a student a few years ago, again, another Ivy League admit eventually, whose grandfather had lived in a very rural part of China and had been a doctor, his physician his whole life, and passed away because of an illness he had was undiagnosed, that it was a couple days to get to a medical center that could possibly have diagnosed it, and they weren't able to get him there in time.
And that really sparked an interest in this applicant who was very interested in technology, about telehealth and he really saw the advantage of telehealth in developing countries or rural parts of even, you know, developed countries like the United States, for example, have a lot of territory they need to cover. And so that drove him to do you know, I worked with him to get telehealth-related summer internships.
And so when he applied he had this really interesting story and he framed it around this narrative of his grandfather's white coat, his white physician's jacket that hangs in in his household, and how that you know, inspired him and motivated him but it really the part about his grandfather was two sentences, right? It simply set the narrative and then the rest of it was about him and the student and his quest and the roadblocks that he had and how he was able to use this personal story, this personal tragedy that happened to him to drive his intellectual curiosity and then related directly to things that were happening at this university that related to telehealth related to next generation, AI and other engineering related problems that he wanted to solve.
The final example for you is a student who will be starting at a top West Coast school, this coming fall, and the A student talked about her hairbrush and essay about her hair. And I can see some of you scratching your heads and thinking, okay, hair, I don't get it.
But it was something where she had, you know, she talked about having this, like, curly, frizzy hair, living in a very humid city, and how every day started the same, right? Like, how do I tame my hair? How do I get this first thing done, and then move on to the rest of my day, and how her expertise with that, you know, turned into something that she would work with her friends, she would help her friends.
And then she was the go-to person for parties and for prom. And, it just developed this confidence and this social circle. And this, this reputation, it was something that she loved to do and just a real part of her character. And so again, these don't need to be immensely deeply traumatic, or heavy or overly serious essays, essay topics they need to just relate to you personally.
But again, always ask yourself, so what? Right? I have curly hair, and I live in a really humid city. Okay, so what? Well, let me tell you, so what. So this is something that every morning, I actually have to think about. And it's something that I turned into a hobby and something that helps connect me with my friends. And you know, I built a little bit of a personality around this.
So I think it's really important to find that balance between being too serious, too light, to step by step too up in the air and tell a compelling story, right? Because in this essay, we are storytellers, one thing that some of my students have found very helpful. For those of you who are familiar with the month, Radio Hour on national, Public Radio, and NPR, I find that there are some very, very good storytellers there. And one of the things that I like about the moth is that they're very different genres of storytellers.
So you can really find a storyteller from a background that is similar to yours, a perspective that is similar to yours, a narrative style that is similar to yours, see how they create tension, see how they bring the audience, and see how they resolve the story at the end, right? What is the path that they take towards resolving that, I find that effective storytelling translates very well to essays because, in essays, of course, you're telling a story. So that is one suggestion I would give you get the podcast, throw it on your headphones, and listen to it. And hopefully, you enjoy it.
The last thing I'm going to talk about, is, of course, the Supreme Court decision, where race is no longer considered as an identified factor in admissions. And so some of you may have read where the schools are saying, Look, you can still talk about it in your essays.
And so something I want to be very careful of here is it's not just about talking about race, right? You can't just say, Oh, this is my background, in your essay, it needs to be as part of a broader discussion about you and your values and your growth and maybe struggles or opportunities or things that you've done, you know, outreach, giving back. It, it has to be part of your story. And obviously, you know, our identity, our background, all of that does, of course, inform who we are.
But it's incumbent on you as the writer to talk about that too, to bring that out and weave it into your narrative, not just kind of stamp it on the top of the page and say, well, there you go. So as we move, into common app season, right, really thinking about that main common app essay, remember the other thing that I would suggest to you is if you know the schools that you're going to apply early to or the schools that you want to apply to look at their supplements, and look at the questions they're answering because we want to make sure we don't put everything in the common app we want.
You know, we don't want to put too much into this essay. And we want to save something we don't want to talk about. We can't talk too in depth about why we want to study at a particular school, for example, because that belongs in the supplements. We can talk about what we want to study and why and how we got to that conclusion in the Common App essay, that's fine. There's also right under the common app essay, of course, we have the COVID-19 essay, and we have the additional information essay for COVID-19 as really think about my experience unique Alright, everybody suffered everybody struggled During COVID, some people lost family members. You know, some people lost employment it was it was very disruptive for a lot of people.
But I really want you to think about, whether is it something that merits being included in the Common Application. How did it affect you and your path and your journey? Right. So don't just write for the sake of writing, just because you have the room to write does not mean you have to fill it. Same thing for the additional information session, I see a lot of students who use that, as you know, let me just cram in additional extracurricular activities or cram in, you know, another essay or something I've written, and that can actually work against you.
So you really need to think about, whether am I using this space to explain something that nowhere else in the application is there an opportunity to do so. And if that is the case, then absolutely keep those additional information essays short and sweet. Remember that you're, you know, have some mercy on these poor, overworked, overtired admissions committee members who have to read, you know, 10s of thousands of essays every year, have mercy on them, keep it to the point. Remember, I'm going to repeat this.
And you know, over and over again, I would have written you a letter, a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time, Mark Twain. Brevity is very, very, very important here. And finally, and I hope this goes without saying excessive creativity, has no place in a common app essay. If you are a poet laureate, and you wish to write verse for your common app essay, even then I would urge you not to because there are other places in the application for you to showcase your talent. These things backfire. They backfire stupendously. They might work once in a very rare while.
And the danger in that is that the essay itself most likely does not work. But the rest of the application showed enough promise that they gave that essay.
So now is not the time to be hyper-creative. Now is a time to be thoughtful, articulate, and creative. More so in the sense of digging deep within yourself, and finding that narrative that really resonates and speaks to who you are. Look forward to discussing more of the common app as we progress through this series. And thank you again for listening.
Thank you for joining us today. Please take a moment to subscribe to my admittedly podcast and download this episode. I welcome you to share your thoughts and questions with me. You can find us on social media at admittedly podcast. I look forward to continuing our journey together.
